


lay awake at night and scheme (of all the things that you would change)

by AsperJasper



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Daredevil & Defenders New Year's Exchange 2020, Gen, guess who found an excuse to write another charactter study lmao
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-03
Updated: 2021-01-03
Packaged: 2021-03-13 00:15:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28519224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AsperJasper/pseuds/AsperJasper
Summary: New York has always been loud. It’s the city the never sleeps, and there’s always motion and voices and never silence or stillness. It’s just how it is, and Matt loves the city, but since the accident, it’s a blessing to have absolutely anything to distract himself with.He often lies awake at night, unable to sleep through the noise. Through the never-ending cars, the rumble of the late-night trains, and the voices that never, ever stop. Conversations and arguments and noises he doesn’t recognize as anything other than human, crying and screaming and people getting sick, singing and dancing and running up and down stairs. Movies and TV and music coming from everywhere at once, nothing but noise noise noise all the time.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 16
Collections: DDE’s 2021 New Year’s Day Exchange





	lay awake at night and scheme (of all the things that you would change)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DowneyStarkJr](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=DowneyStarkJr).



> Only a day late for the exchange here I am! This is for @downeystarkjr on Tumblr, so hopefully you get to see this and hopefully you like it! The prompts I got were excellent and I had so much fun with this, but (as you can probably guess from the title) I was inspired by the song choice, Warriors by Imagine Dragons. It really is Such a Matt song and while I don't know if everyone else will see how it comes through in this fic I promise I really was inspired by it lmao!

When Matt wakes up in the hospital, some primal part of his nine-year-old brain is convinced that he’s died and gone to hell.

Surely that was what this must be. Nothing but ear-splitting noise, everything around him pressing in so close and so rough that all he could identify for sure was pain. It hurts. All of it. His face burns, something rough scrapes across his skin every time he tries to move, and everything is noise, noise, noise. Crying and moaning and screaming and voices so loud he can’t even tell what they’re saying, beeps and buzzes and this constant thrum that he can feel vibrating through him as much as he can hear it. And all of it hurts, as much as the rest of his body combined.

This must be hell, he thinks. He must have died and gone to hell, because nothing else could possibly hurt this much.

It’s his dad’s voice that finally breaks through the painful, kinetic noise surrounding him. His dad’s voice reassuring him that he’s there, he’s right there, and one point of that painful contact all over his body takes the shape of a hand.

His dad is here. Right here.

This can’t be hell, because his dad is here. 

Even if the entire world is fire, settling into twisting, unidentifiable shapes as his brain starts to slow from the panic that had set in as soon as he’d women up, his dad is here.

* * *

The way Matt sees the world now is different.

It isn’t strange to him, now that he’s used to it. It still hurts half the time, the never-ending flood of noise and taste and smell and sensation wrapped around his entire body, but it isn’t strange.

It’s just…different.

It isn’t like he was ever the most popular kid on the block, but he had friends. There were games to play and kids to laugh with.

That’s also different, now. They whisper when they think he can’t hear, and if he were anybody else they’d be right, but they’re wrong. He hears them wonder if he’ll get better, wonder if he’s okay, and he hears the way their voices change when he tries to join them like he used to. How they treat him like he’s delicate, like he isn’t still the same kid who used to play soccer in the park with them, who used to be rough and tumble and covered in dirt and bruises with the rest of them. They aren’t sure of themselves around him like they used to be, and Matt can feel that difference just as tangibly as he feels the bursts of steam from the subway grates.

But different is okay.

His dad reassures him every time he gets frustrated, every time he finds something new that he can’t do the way he did before. Different is okay, and they find a different way to do it. Labels on his clothes hangers first in puff paint code they make up themselves and then in Braille, so he can still get dressed by himself. Days spent moving furniture to new places so Matt can practice with his cane without feeling self-conscious outside.

There’s nothing wrong with being different, his dad reminds him every time, and Matt can hear him staying up late trying to keep up with the things Matt needs. There’s nothing wrong with being different, and you’re still you. You’re still my Matty.

* * *

It’s easier, Matt realizes, to throw himself into school.

It makes his dad proud, to see how hard Matt is working, and he can still feel at home in a classroom when he knows what’s going on.

There’s a feeling in his gut that this is what he’s supposed to be doing. That he’s supposed to be studying and preparing for…for something. He isn’t quite sure what. Maybe it’s as simple as he knows this is what his dad wants for him, to focus and learn and plan for a bright future that Jack somehow sees for him, but he can feel this is right.

The hard work and late nights, teaching himself things around the noise he can’t get away from, this is right and what he’s supposed to be doing.

It’s also easier because it gives him something, anything, to concentrate on.

New York has always been loud. It’s the city the never sleeps, and there’s always motion and voices and never silence or stillness. It’s just how it is, and Matt loves the city, but since the accident, it’s a blessing to have absolutely anything to distract himself with.

He often lies awake at night, unable to sleep through the noise. Through the never-ending cars, the rumble of the late-night trains, and the voices that never, ever stop. Conversations and arguments and noises he doesn’t recognize as anything other than human, crying and screaming and people getting sick, singing and dancing and running up and down stairs. Movies and TV and music coming from everywhere at once, nothing but noise noise noise all the time.

He tries sleeping with headphones on, but all that does was hurt his ears from the outside instead of the inside.

So instead, he listens. Tries to filter the noise down into something manageable, sort it into categories, and shut them off. It doesn’t exactly work, but he does learn some things.

Like that New York isn’t exactly a safe haven. Like that people like to argue as much as they like to be kind.

Like that any excuse is good enough when somebody already wants to fight.

He promises his dad and he promises himself that he won’t be one of them, one of the people swinging their fists at anything just because they like it.

And he wonders when somebody will come along and do something about it. About all of the noise that comes from anger and hatred and vile, awful things.

Maybe, he thinks in desperation after one too many sleepless nights for a nine-almost-ten-year-old, maybe he has to. Maybe he can hear all of this because it’s his job. Maybe that’s what he’s preparing for.

* * *

The gunshot that kills Jack Murdock is the loudest noise Matt has ever heard.

Maybe because he somehow expected it, after hearing his dad win the fight and after too many conversations overheard between him and the Fixer, but the sound of that gunshot echoes against the alley walls and reverberates through the house, and Matt knows exactly who the bullet hits.

The sound doesn’t stop. Maybe it’s a memory. Maybe it’s a nightmare.

But it doesn’t stop.

It never stops.

* * *

Stick teaches him to control the noise. To take in every piece of information flooding his senses and categorize it all into something useable.

Some of it had already started to do that on instinct. He knows, before Stick tells him, how to tell when a ball is coming at his face. He can tell when somebody comes into the room, and he can focus on a specific sound to listen to.

But Stick shows him how to twist every bit of input into one complex tapestry, how to interpret the sounds and smells and tastes to paint a perfect picture of the person who just walked in. How to taste every ingredient of the food he eats, how to tell when somebody is lying just by the way their heartbeat almost imperceptibly shifts.

Stick also teaches him to fight, a fact that feels as right as it makes him feel guilty.

Maybe it’s the way Stick talks to him. Like he, at ten years old, is destined to do something great. Like he might be the one to win the war he doesn’t actually know anything about, and like he might be good enough to finally make a dent in all the horrible noise surrounding him all the time. Like if he gets good enough with his fists and with a staff and with every challenge Stick throws at him, he might be able to go to the people causing so much pain and make them stop.

It goes against everything his dad had wanted for him, but with scrapes and bruises stinging against his skin and so much training to focus on, the echoing gunshot fades into the background, and the guilt sinks so deep in his stomach he can ignore it.

This feels right.

This must be right.

He must be meant for this.

* * *

After Stick leaves, Matt throws himself into his studies harder than ever before. No more bruised shins to distract him, and no more way to forget the promises he’d made his dad. He’s going to make something of himself, and it’s going to be something more than a fight can give.

It isn’t easy. Not to do well in school all the time, not to stay focused when the noise is still never-ending, but he makes it. He pushes through.

He had to.

Because he wasn’t made for fighting. If he was, Stick wouldn’t have left.

He was made for this. For the life his dad had always wanted for him, for books and debates and the triumphant feeling of a pile of college letters with no rejections.

In the pride of being top of his class regardless of how hard it was, in the pride of the highest LSAT score in his class, in the pride of a Columbia acceptance letter and a serene smile in the face of an advisor who was good at pretending to support Matt while his heart constantly betrayed how little he actually believed in Matt.

It’s a sweet little victory, and the gunshot fades for just a moment into a much sweeter memory of his dad’s smile. His voice. A feeling of somebody else being proud of Matt for what he’s doing and how hard he’s working.

* * *

It’s easy, for years, to stick to this plan. This way of doing things.

Easier than ever because this time, he has a friend. Foggy Nelson who slipped into place easier than anything has ever been for Matt, and who is just exactly right.

Matt hadn’t realized how much he missed simple, easy friendship. Easy laughter.

And with Foggy, that’s what it is. Easy. Nothing’s been this easy in a long time, but Foggy is.

It’s all late-night study sessions and celebratory trips to Josie’s, and stupid inside jokes and Foggy doesn’t ignore that Matt is blind but he doesn’t treat Matt like he breakable, either, and that’s a balance that not many people have managed to find.

It’s nice.

And he doesn’t want to ruin it. He doesn’t.

But he lies awake at night listening to the city, on nights where he just can’t stop thinking and just can’t fall asleep, and part of him itches to go out and do something. Even if he isn’t part of Stick’s war anymore, there is a war to be fought and he can hear it happening.

But he likes this life he’s starting to have. And so he ignores it.

He slips out of the dorm room to go to the gym and he fights a punching bag until the stinging in his knuckles is loud enough to drown out the other noise, and then he goes back to the life he has now.

Because this is what he wants. This is what he needs. And if he lets himself follow these instincts he can feel somewhere deep inside himself, he risks ruining it all in one fell swoop.

* * *

In the end, it’s a child’s voice that pushes so loudly against Matt that he can’t ignore it.

Other sounds have gotten easier. A gunshot goes off and if nobody responds, Matt can call 911 himself. A couple argues and Matt can listen and make sure nothing gets out of hand. There are systems in place for a reason, and Matt can use them. There’s no need to go out and use his fists.

But a child crying, night after night. A little girl who deserves to feel safe in her own home.

And Matt calls CPS, and he listens with his fists clenched tight when the system he forces himself to have so much faith in fails.

And then he has to listen to her cry again.

And that’s too much. That’s more than he can ignore.

He ties a strip off a ripped shirt around his eyes to hide his face, and he tastes his own blood, and his fists hurt more than they have in years but a little girl sleeps soundly in her bed, and that’s worth it.

Maybe this is what he’s made for, after all.

* * *

Matt tries to find a precarious balance. Between friendship and lies, between law and vigilantism, between guilt and dedication.

It comes as no surprise when the balance finally tips, and he’s left alone.

It feels like something he should have known was coming, as he’s struggled to balance for months. Tipping one way and then another when Foggy found out and when he told Karen and through everything with Frank. Leaning into Daredevil and leaning into Matt, trying to figure out which one he is.

Because he can’t be both.

How can he be?

Matt is law and order. Logical conclusions and careful research and years of studying hard.

And Daredevil is fighting back. Cuts and bruises and reckless impulsivity.

They don’t match, don’t line up, so how can he be both?

He decides, once he’s alone, to throw himself into being Matt. Into being the man his dad would be proud of, to ignore the twist in his gut every night as he lies in bed unable to sleep from the noise, to ignore the chest in his closet with the suit in it, and it works.

For a while, anyway, he thinks he’s happy. He’s content with what he’s doing and pleased with where he’s going, and things feel good.

He misses his friends, but he doesn’t blame them, and maybe if he sinks far enough into being Matt, they’ll come back to him when they’re ready.

So of course, just as it feels like that’s starting to happen, he gets dragged in again. And it’s nothing but noise, nothing at all but noise, culminating and pressurizing until he’s Daredevil underneath a collapsing building.

There’s no light at the end of the tunnel, and this time, he thinks, this time, he’ll get to find out what hell is really like. If it’s somehow worse than the noise he lives with every day.

He doubts it.

* * *

When he wakes up, it’s quiet.

He’s spent years wishing for quiet, wishing that all the noise would stop.

This is worse.

It’s a case, maybe, of be careful what you wish for. There’s only one noise, only the ringing in his ears that pushes everything else out entirely.

He thinks this might be hell. Even though it’s real life, he knows it is, he thinks it must be hell. There’s no way anything could get worse than this.

Except God hammering the point in even further by giving him his senses back just in time to hear Fisk be released from prison. The one victory he’d actually felt solid in, gone just like that.

If God is real, he’d better avoid getting too close to Matt. It won’t end well for either of them.

* * *

It’s almost strange, the way it feels after everything.

In fact, it’s very strange.

For a very long time, Matt’s life has always felt precarious. Like letting himself take one step in any direction would ruin everything. And he’d tried to go left and he’d tried to go right and all that had happened was everything managing to go to shit anyway.

And he’d been closer to the edge than ever before, this time. Closer to throwing everything away, to crossing a line he’d never come back from.

And instead, he’d pulled himself back. Listened to the worried voices of his friends who refused to give up on him, and decided to be better than Fisk.

And now…things are different.

And it’s strange.

It doesn’t feel like a balancing act anymore. It feels like a settling. Like he knows who he is and where he belongs, and it’s here at a table with Foggy and Karen, and laughter comes easily the way it hasn’t for months and months.

It feels like he finally understands something that he was fighting against for so long. Like he’s finally connected the dots.

Because this is him. All of this. The laughter and shared drinks and bright plans for the future, that’s all part of him. And so is the fight, the noise that floods in and keeps him from sitting still at night, it’s part of the same drive to do something good and make something better of this world. To look at Hell’s Kitchen and prove that it can be better than this noise.

He doesn’t need to balance. To choose. He doesn’t need to feel like he’s falling. All he needs is to be.

He thinks his dad would be plenty proud of him anyway. Stinging, bruised fists be damned.

**Author's Note:**

> As always, I'm Asper and I'd love to hear your thoughts and chat about whatever! I love comments and can also be found going crazy for Matt Murdock on tumblr @matt-murdok!


End file.
